
CHRISTINA YAU
WordBoost
A FUN MOTIVATIONAL WAY TO LEARN ENGLISH
A vocabulary app that increases motivation to learn English in a challenging and fun way.

The goal was to design a payment app that allowed for quick payment and social connection in an organic way.
Overview
I created an English vocabulary application called "WordBoost". WordBoost strives to enhance learners' English proficiency and motivate them to continue reaching their vocabulary memorization goals . The product has a multi-level challenge system along with interaction rewards to help users maintain motivation in using the app to enhance English proficiency.
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This case study walks through the design process of designing WordBoost, a mobile vocabulary app, and the design decisions that I made through it. This is a personal project created as a User Experience Design student at CareerFoundry.
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Tools: Adobe XD, Balsamiq, Usability Hub, Optimal Card Sort
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Project Duration: ~8 months
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Role: Sole Designer
Addressing Painpoints
The problem was users were not motivated to continue meeting their memorization goals after a short period of time even though they knew these goals would help them improve their English vocabulary.
The Design Process
Empathized with users' experiences of payment applications through research.
User Interviews
User Proto-Personas
User Flow
Task Analysis
Created multiple app design iterations through testing and UI integration.
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Usability Testing
Next Steps
Understand
Competitive Analysis
First, I analyzed three vocabulary applications: Word of the Day, Vocabulary, and Vocab Junkie, to better understand who my competitors were and their design approach. Each application had different approaches in how they designed their product.
Research
User Interviews
After analyzing competing vocabulary applications, I conducted and analyzed user interviews to to see how Basil could better meet user goals and needs and address the problems they experienced with payment apps.

Color-coded patterns to find and categorize user behavior patterns and product issues
User Proto-Persona
Using the insights and patterns I found, I created a user proto-persona, Azdihar Ahmed (see below).
My main target audience was international college students who were not native English speakers.
Meet Azdihar Ahmed, a Moroccan international in England, who is about to graduate and is looking for full-time employment in England. She uses her vocabulary app to help improve her English conversation skills and increase her job marketability.

Problem Statement
The problem statement I attributed to Azdihar was that she needs a way to be motivated to consistently memorize vocabulary words because she usually loses motivation to memorize after a few days. We will know this to be true when we see she is able to consistently meet her memorization goals of memorizing a certain number of vocabulary words per day.
Hypothesis Statement
We believe that by providing badges for each memorization goal and creating levels and random surprise rewards such as special badges will help her to be more motivated to consistently memorize a certain number of vocabulary words per day.
Task Analysis & User Flow
I then chose the two goals the user persona would want to accomplish and created user flows to visualize their navigation process to accomplish their task.
Analyze
Wireframes
Low-fidelity wireframe
Design & Test
Usability Testing
I conducted usability tests over Zoom with three participants with a low-fidelity prototype.
